Abstract
BackgroundHepatitis E virus (HEV) is one of most important zoonotic viruses, and it can infect a wide range of host species. Avian HEV has been identified as the aetiological agent of big liver and spleen disease or hepatitis-splenomegaly syndrome in chickens. HEV infection is common among chicken flocks in China, and there are currently no practical measures for preventing the spread of the disease. The predominant avian HEV genotype circulating in China have been identified as genotype 3 strains, although some novel genotypes have also been identified from chicken flocks in China.ResultsIn this study, we used a meta-transcriptomics approach to identify a new subtype of genotype 3 avian HEV in broiler chickens at a poultry farm located in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China. The complete genome sequence of the avian HEV, designated CaHEV-GDSZ01, is 6655-nt long, including a 5′ UTR of 24 nt and a 3′ UTR of 125 nt (excluding the poly(A) tail), and contains three open reading frames (ORFs). Sequence analysis indicated that the complete ORF1 (4599 nt/1532 aa), ORF2 (1821 nt/606 aa) and ORF3 (264 nt/87 aa) of CaHEV-GDSZ01 share the highest nucleotide sequence identity (85.8, 86.7 and 95.8%, respectively) with the corresponding ORFs of genotype 3 avian HEV. Phylogenetic analyses further demonstrated that the avian HEV identified in this study is a new subtype of genotype 3 avian HEV.ConclusionsOur results demonstrate that a new subtype of genotype 3 avian HEV is endemic in Guangdong, China, and could cause high mortality in infected chickens. This study also provides full genomic data for better understanding the evolutionary relationships of avian HEV circulating in China. Altogether, the results presented in this study suggest that more attention should be paid to avian HEV and its potential disease manifestation.
Highlights
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is one of most important zoonotic viruses, and it can infect a wide range of host species
ORF3, which overlaps with ORF2, encodes a cytoskeleton-associated phosphoprotein that interacts with the ORF2 protein and a number of cellular signal transduction pathway proteins [7, 8]
After default quality control (QC) and de-barcoding steps provided by the Illumina platform, 40,531,484 reads (95%) remained for further analysis
Summary
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is one of most important zoonotic viruses, and it can infect a wide range of host species. Avian HEV has been identified as the aetiological agent of big liver and spleen disease or hepatitissplenomegaly syndrome in chickens. HEV infection is common among chicken flocks in China, and there are currently no practical measures for preventing the spread of the disease. Among the three ORFs, ORF1 is the longest and is located at the 5′ terminus of the genome; this ORF encodes a non-structural polyprotein including a methyltransferase, a papain-like cysteine protease, a viral helicase, and an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) [4]. ORF2 is located at the 3′ end of the genome and encodes a capsid protein, which is the major structural protein and functionally binds to host cells, induces. ORF3, which overlaps with ORF2, encodes a cytoskeleton-associated phosphoprotein that interacts with the ORF2 protein and a number of cellular signal transduction pathway proteins [7, 8]
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